


The Grunnings Man

by halffareprince



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:21:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halffareprince/pseuds/halffareprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the summer after her third year Hermione's parents are visited by a particularly unpleasant drill salesman, and it hardly seems fair that this should be her first brush with the wizarding world in a month.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Grunnings Man

The Grunnings man nodded shortly at the secretary and, sitting down behind a magazine, immediately began to make faces. He laughed several silent laughs—conspiratorial, uproarious, mildly offended, mildly offensive—and then tried on several more attitudes, smiling brightly, nodding politely. The spare skin in his heavy, wrinkled face and seemed to flap and billow around the pages of the magazine he'd chosen— _Boy's Own!_ , a bright one with a watercolor image of a smiling sun setting over the Thames—with every startling transformation. This routine continued for a while until, satisfied, he set the magazine down atop his samples case and made a face that must have looked pleasant from the inside but was distinctly unctuous from without.

It was only at that final unctuous resting face that the girl in the operating room recognized her parents' visitor. 

The Grunnings man checked his watch. The doctors had told him there would be no morning appointments.

Hermione was sitting, reclined, in an empty dentist's chair, spinning slowly and trying with some difficulty to disguise her own, spontaneous laughing face without the benefit of _Girl's Own!_ , which sat uselessly on the coffee table in the waiting room. Through the wide window she could watch Mr. Dursley make eye contact with her parents' dizzy old secretary every five minutes, exactly. He did this three times and then looked, finally, into the operating room.

With visible regret Hermione stopped her chair spinning with one trainer and got out from beneath the air conditioning vent above her perch. She slid out of the chair like a bit of parchment caught up in a breeze and opened the door into the waiting room. It was the unrepentant middle of July and for her trouble—for moving to see Mr. Dursley in when she did not want to move a single inch to see anybody, anywhere, at all—she caught a blast of hot, wet air against her face. Her bushy hair seemed to claw involuntarily back toward the air conditioning in the operating room.

Mr. Dursley nodded hello and made one of the faces. "Hot enough for you?" He said. Hermione smiled politely and he added, suddenly concerned and put-off sounding, "Well, I was told these two didn't have any patients for another hour today."

Hermione's breath caught for a moment and she brought her hand reflexively up to her front teeth. "Oh, no! I'm—" she paused and put her smile back on, mouth closed. "I'm their daughter, Hermione. They're caught out running some errands, I'm afraid, but they'll be back soon."

"Oh, yes," he mumbled. He leaned down to pick up his samples case and when he came back up to face Hermione he looked like someone forced by an Imperius curse to play the fun uncle. "Hermione! What a lovely, unusual name! Rolls off the old tongue. My name is Vernon Dursley, and I'm here to sell your parents some drills."

"Lovely," she said.

"Oh, I know you kids don't like to see 'em, but—" he unbuckled the sample case to reveal something that looked second cousin to a pneumatic drill. Big and heavy-looking, its bit seemed only reluctantly resigned to chewing up teeth instead of bits of sidewalk. "Our first dentist's model. We're diversifying—getting bigger, that is."

Hermione knew quite a lot about dentistry—she liked to know quite a lot about anything that might eventually become relevant—and it was, with no exceptions, the worst dentist's drill she'd ever seen.

"No cavities, then! Ha, ha!" He pressed a button at the top of the case and the drill squealed loudly enough to rouse the Grangers' secretary, who, startled, briefly caught her bearings before readjusting an oscillating fan and nodding off once more.

"I have one about your age, I'd wager. Dudley's his name. You've heard of Smeltings? Very exclusive school."

"I'm not sure I have," Hermione said. Before she'd gotten her Hogwarts letter Hermione had taken very detailed notes from a book called _Schools And Scholars Of Bright Young Britain_ and sent extremely polite letters of introduction to each one. "I don't know all the smaller ones..."

"School years," Mr. Dursley said, unmoved. "Best years of my life, Smeltings. The chums you make at school... why, it brings a tear to my eye even today. Dentists make a good living—very good living—where is it you go? St. Lucretia's, maybe?"

_I go to school with your nephew._ To Hermione it seemed, every July, like the Hogwarts Express would never come. To mention it even to this man would be as much a relief as to walk back into the air conditioning and sleep for an hour. But after a moment she nodded.

"Good school, that."

The wizarding world disappears so thoroughly from the Muggle world that to leave it even for a few months requires a very firm conviction that it will come back for you when it's ready. Hermione felt betrayed, somehow, when she realized that the first contact she'd had with it in three weeks was Harry's terrible uncle and his absurd drill.

While she thought about Hogwarts Mr. Dursley went on about nearly everything Dudley had done in his three years at Smeltings. He spoke of his wife and his boss and the man he'd sold some drills to yesterday. And before she could stop herself, feeling suddenly isolated in the oppressive heat of the waiting room, Hermione asked: "Does Dudley get on well with his cousin?"

It felt good but she regretted it immediately. Mr. Dursley turned very white and informed her that Dudley had no relatives, none at all, thanks, and—gritting his teeth—said he would be fine in the waiting room, thanks, perfectly fine. Hermione, a little sick to her stomach, felt like she had given a troll Harry's home address. She had heard all about Mr. Dursley's temper.

From her perch in the operating room, for an agonizing clutch of minutes, she watched Mr. Dursley fume in the waiting room. He had stopped making faces except for the furious one. The Grangers' secretary, if she had been awake, would have been very unnerved indeed.

Finally Dr. and Dr. Granger's Mondeo Estate appeared in the front window, rolling to a quiet stop. Mr. Dursley, still not composed, got up to open the door for them. Hermione's father shook Mr. Dursley's hand and her mother, having apologized for the delay, rushed into the other room to give Hermione an equally apologetic hug.

"It'll only be a few minutes, Hermione," she said. "Then we can go to lunch. If you still feel like eating this late..."

In the waiting room Mr. Dursley had launched into his speech. "Outside my usual territory, of course, but," and here he made the conspiratorial face, "with _certain_ customers— _partners_ , really—only the most favorable terms..." But his heart clearly wasn't in it. She watched with a strange horror as Mr. Dursley stumbled over every third word and even, once, over his sample case.

Hermione's father, now, was the one who was hardly able to avoid laughing. "Mum," Hermione said. "Please tell him you'll think his offer over."

"Hermione, are you watching the same presentation I am?" Mr. Dursley was now berating the Grangers' secretary, who had no teeth at all. He had pulled the oscillating fan out of its socket and begun shouting something about central air conditioning and the right kind of people.

Hermione turned her eyes down, away from the window. "I feel sorry for—h-him. Just tell him, so we can get out of here, and he'll be less—"

Hermione's mother watched a little while longer. "You're a nice girl, Hermione. Very well brought-up, if I may say. He'll just—have to stop waving the fan around, first."

And Hermione was alone in the operating room once more. "You've got a _queer place_ , here, Grangers," Mr. Dursley told her mother, by way of a greeting.

While the doctors Granger—mild-mannered to a fault, even for dentists—did their best to defuse the situation Hermione sat in her chair and took a final, slow-motion spin before lunch.

She knew life at the Dursley household would be especially unpleasant that night, and for a few minutes the tranquil and endless afternoon that stretched out before her seemed sad and gauche. In her head she was already writing Harry a letter, vague and apologetic, but what she really wanted was to take him on a picnic, or to visit relatives up north, or just out to pick up some fresh milk at the market while the sun set some uneventful Friday night.

Because as she watched Mr. Dursley thrash around the waiting room she remembered that there was nothing Harry would ever want more than the chance to wait around for his parents before lunch.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2012 and revised, lightly, in 2015.


End file.
